September opened her mouth to object—the hours she had spent earning them! They were most certainly not junk! She had exactly seventeen dollars and thirty-seven cents in her jar and every one of them was as real as a roan with a bellyache! But the Calcatrix held up one coppery claw and continued patiently.
“Ah, my pecuniary petunia, but they are not real, because no one here would take them. To the denizens of the Blue Market, they have no power. What would they do with them?” He shook his head from side to side to make it clink and sing. “Why, without magic, they’re nothing more than crocodile scales. None of them came here looking to trade their wares for copper with a human head on it. But I can wave my claws over them and make them coins, just by saying a few words, because I am the Exchequer, which is another way of saying Wizard. I can take your junk and make it wealth simply by saying: One of these is worth this or that much. The coins will still be coins, they will not have changed. But suddenly they will have power. And my dear, when you can change something just by saying a word, that is magic. Or I can take them and give you a certain number of Crabs in return, which is the very new and very fashionable currency of Fairyland—but then we are fully in sorcery’s grip, for who are you to say I reckoned it right? When a thing becomes so simply because a person in shiny clothes said it with conviction, that is also magic. If you argue, then it is a wizards’ duel! If a very silly one, because I am the Calcatrix and you are not.”
September thought very carefully. “Maybe that’s so for Fairy money,” she admitted. “But human money is just money. It’s quite serious stuff. And even if it weren’t, it doesn’t matter whether or not money is imaginary, if everyone agrees that it’s got power. If we can’t pay the bank every month we’ll lose our farm, and I daresay they wouldn’t like it if my mother told them to square up for a duel.”
The Calcatrix grinned, showing all his silver teeth. “Just because it’s imaginary doesn’t mean it isn’t real.” He flared his green tailfeathers and settled one great penny-clad paw onto the Till’s hand crank. “Does your human money not make objects appear at your whim? Does it not change a person from one thing to another, perhaps from a frightened child in rags to a haughty industrialist in a suit? Does it not heal you when you are sick? The doctor must be paid, after all. Can it not strike down your enemies at your command? Keep some folk on one side of town and others high on the hill as sure as briars round a castle? Create a coal-fire in the hearth where there was none, whisk you away to a tropical clime when you are so cold you cannot bear to watch another snowflake fall? Oh, do tell me what wonders human money would have to muster to earn the awe with which you treat the littlest Fairyland bauble!” The Calcatrix laughed, the coins of his throat tinkling. “And hie ye not to the Stock Exchange, child! There sneaks so much sorcery, crackling along the ticker tape, that if enough men all together believe a Company has heaps of money, why, suddenly, it will swim in a sea of Conjured Cash! But should those same men turn their faith away, that Dinero Diabolick will vanish as fast as the first abracadabra ever uttered. All that gold, just—presto!—turned to sticks and seeds and pinecones. Now, call the Calcatrix a liar.”
September blinked. It looked like the truth, if you scrunched up your eyes. Hadn’t it happened just that way just before September was born? Hadn’t Aunt Margaret’s husband, that unhappy Uncle of whom they all so rarely spoke, gone from a great man with fur on his coat and squeak in his shoes to a pauper with only a dust farm and a lot of suddenly powerless paper in the space of a night?
The copper crocodile nodded curtly, seeing his case made. “But enough of all these free lessons in my rarefied speciality! How clever of you to get something for nothing—and here’s me hardly noticing. Well! Let us begin.” His feathered tail swept over the till as he bent down to get his stubby hands into the works. “We used to be dreadfully backwards about this, you know, weighing your soul against a feather and all that. But now we have a Methodology. Now we have Tools. It’s such a good lot of fun. Commence! Yes! First Inquiry!” The Calcatrix puffed with the effort of pushing the crank into position. “What is your profession?”
September’s shoulders fell. “I…I haven’t got one yet.”
The copper crocodile blinked his silver eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, “but that’s just ridiculous. How can you have a Way if you haven’t got a profession? And how can we put you down in our books if you haven’t got a Way? Surely you’re employed somehow.”
“I go to school,” September offered. “And I do odd jobs for those that need it.”
The Calcatrix scowled. “All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics. Well, let’s ring this up item by item. What sort of thing do you like to do best?”
September did not have to think about that. “Traveling. To Fairyland—and back, but that’s not nearly as good.”
The Blue Wind scoffed. She and her puffin had dozed off, their heads leaning against each other, but the crank’s creaking woke them. “That’s not a thing you do, it’s a place you go to do things in.”
The Calcatrix ignored her. He continued indulgently. “And what sorts of things do you do when you get to Fairyland?”
September spoke very quickly in hopes that she could tell the truth without it counting against her. “Well, the first time I made friends with a Wyverary and a Marid and a Hundred-and-Twelve-Year-Old Lamp and got a magical wrench from a casket in the Worsted Wood and sailed all the way around Fairyland and defeated the Marquess.”
The Calcatrix quirked a copper eyebrow. “So you’re a revolutionary.”
“No!”
“But you’ve already admitted to consorting with known mutinous rebels, and you’re keeping very dubious company at present. Whereas I number among my peers Magicians, Ballerinas, Cockatrices, and the King himself. What does that say about the pair of us, hm? You said the first time—what about the second? Perhaps there’s something there.”
“I went into Fairyland-Below on account of my shadow being Queen there and almost shot her with a Rivet Gun—but I didn’t do it! And she’s still Queen, I think…”
“So you’re only an attempted murderer,” the Calcatrix said. He seemed uncertain what to do with the crank, given this information.
The Blue Wind laughed so hard the puffin on her shoulder flew off in consternation.
“Don’t forget that you stole that wrench and did shoot a Minotaur and pummeled that Marid you love so much half to death just to get your way. You even lied just to get into Fairyland in the first place!” She was bent over with giggles now, trying to catch her breath. Snowflakes flew from her eyes like tears. “And look here!” she cried between gales, “Contraband! She’s a smuggler to cherry it!” The Blue Wind grabbed the wooden hilt of the hammer hanging from September’s belt loops and snatched the nails, remaining butterscotch, and book out of her pocket, as deft as a cutpurse thief. She rattled the nails in their little tin box.
“These here are iron, or else I’m an elephant. Weapons grade! Would an innocent girl just wander around with iron in her pocket? She’s a hoodlum, your Excellency, up to no good and down for nothing nice. I’ll vouch for it—I knew her for a brat the second I saw her. If you don’t believe me, call for a phrenologist! There’s one for sale next to the water pump. She’s got a delinquent skull, just look! There, in her left temple! That’s insurrection, plain as a stamp. Sedition written all over her face. She can’t help it, poor kidlet. However good she tries to be, which isn’t very if you ask me, if you let her open her mouth, chaos comes tumbling out and makes itself right at home on your doorstep.”
The Calcatrix shook his green tailfeathers huffily. The pennies along his spine ruffled like an attack dog’s scruff. But when he spoke his voice was merry. “I think the matter is clear. You’ll have to go down as a Criminal. At least it’s a growth industry. And you can work anywhere.”
September wriggled out from under the Blue Wind’s fingers, which prodded her forehead for further evidence of devilry. “But I’m
not a criminal! I know all that sounds bad, but there were such good reasons for it all! What else could I have done? The Marquess was terribly cruel and my shadow would have driven all the magic out of Fairyland. And as for lying, the Green Wind told me to do it!”
The Blue Wind patted her shoulder convivially. “Oh, we all have such good reasons. It’s the reasons that make it sweet.”
“I am not a criminal,” September repeated, pulling away from the Wind. “Just calling me one doesn’t make it so.”
“Well, of course you’re not a Criminal!” chuckled the Calcatrix. “Not yet. You’re not licensed to commit crimes! A fine place we’d be in if we let just anyone go about infringing and infracting.”
“Excuse me,” September interrupted, quite exasperated with being discussed as though she were on trial. “But all this seems awfully official! I thought things were different now, without the Marquess making the rules. I thought this was an underground market with back alleys and things! I’m quite sure someone told me that, in fact.” She glanced pointedly toward the Blue Wind, who looked smugly delighted.
The Calcatrix scrunched up his long copper snout. “There’s got to be some official claptrap, or else how would you know the unofficial when it came along? How would you recognize dastardly clandestines when you meet them in that dark alley you mention? It’s no fun at all to break the rules if there aren’t any. And for really convoluted rules and breaking, I tell you, child, there’s nothing like a Fairy running things again. It’s been ages since one of those buzzers had the chair! We’d all quite forgotten the games they do so love to play. King Crunchcrab wants to get things straightened up, get the works going right and proper again, the way it was in the Old Days when he was a boy. And that means doing the old Imp-erial foxtrot, if you catch me. Can’t have much of an Empire without Standards, and that’s why I’m stationed out here between Fairyland and Everywhere Else, to bear the standard. Certainly not for the latest cuisine or the local theater. King Charlie came to me personally, right up to the greenback door of the Numismatarium. I rolled out the frogskin carpet for him, nothing but the best: mug of mint, doubloon sandwiches with just a scrape of butter, and the key to my Executive Swamp. The King and I took a marshbottom constitutional together, and lucky for me I had fresh peat on hand! Once we were nestled down in the boggy mud, he laid it all out for me. Thruppence, he said, which is my personal name and I’ll thank you not to use it until we know each other better, Thruppence, he said, if I’m to go about Empiring, I won’t make a half-job of it. I was taught if a fellow takes up a sport he has to begin with fundamentals, with classical technique. A proper Empire wants a border and a currency and some who are high and some who are low, says the Crab. And a really proper Empire, the best and most enviable kind of Empire, has Criminals. You’re not doing Empire right if there aren’t loads of people who don’t like it one bit! It’s all well and good to establish a market economy and purely decorative Parliament, but you’re just lying down on the job if no one’s trying to bring the whole thing down and pass things under the table and cheat the whole business! The trick is, you don’t want freelancers doing the job. A person, on their own, raking up trouble because they enjoy it, well, that’s nothing but dangerous. What’s wanted are Official Criminals, Professional Revolutionaries, Accredited Scoundrels! That way, we always know where we’ve left our toys, if you catch my meaning, and I caught the King’s meaning right in the teeth. So he started handing out licenses, lovely big writs and papers with curlicues and seals on them that said people had to go be wicked in the name of the Crown. I’ve got a stack, I could fill in your name. Oh! And you could bribe me! That’d be a marvelous way to break in, don’t you think?”
“But I don’t want to be a criminal,” September insisted. She could hardly believe that the Charlie Crunchcrab she knew, the cantankerous ferryman who had taken her across the Barleybroom River into the capital city so long ago, could have thought of all of this nonsense. And even if she had done all those things the Blue Wind had said, that didn’t mean it wasn’t nonsense. Finally, she said, more softly: “I certainly don’t want to do it professionally.”
The Calcatrix was beginning to tap his hind claw in irritation. “Well, then what are your intentions toward Fairyland? I’m supposed to ask that anyway, but it’s out of order—see, you’re already breaking the rules!”
September thought for a moment. She didn’t have any intentions. Her intentions had only been to get there, to be there. It had filled up all her heart and her head and her waking hours.
“I suppose I mean to find my old friends there, that’s all. I miss them, and it’s been ever so long.”
The Blue Wind snapped her head back around. “Now you told me you aimed to make trouble! You can’t take it back! I testified on your behalf! I told him you were 100 percent delinquent!”
“She fully admits to seeking out her ne’er-do-well comrades, so I hardly think she can avoid doing what comes naturally.” The copper crocodile smirked—and jumped down onto the Till faster than a penny dropping. He landed on a key that read AGITATOR. The crank turned and the chunk-chime of the register sounded. He leapt, emerald tail flying, onto another that said CONSORTING WITH ROGUES. Chunk-chime. Finally he heaved onto LIAR.
“Step onto the scale, please!” the Calcatrix ordered.
September bit her tongue against the monstrous unfairness of all those words and stepped up onto the brass plates. The black tiles in the register’s display began to whir. The keys moved up and down like carousel horses. She started to say that she was a good girl and if they had to call her something, couldn’t it be Knight or Bishop or any of the things she’d been called before? But the Calcatrix had already rung up the sale.
“You have been accepted into the Treasury as a Contracted Villain with all the rights, privileges, and dashing uniforms due. Please take your receipt.”
The tray of the register opened with a loud chime. September had to stand on her tiptoes to see over the edge. Inside was a long scroll with her name written in little calligraphy and Charles Crunchcrab written in large calligraphy. Underneath, several words glowed with scarlet finality:
Royal scofflaw,
professional revolutionary,
and criminal of the realm
A goodly number of illuminated ravens and rats and wolves and raccoons danced in gold and silver ink in the margins. Beneath her writ lay a suit of black silks, trousers and shirt and scarf and shoes that had never dreamed of squeaking, the very best any Criminal could ask for.
CHAPTER V
A PITCHFORK SAID NO
In Which September Is Formally Introduced to Her Car, Learns of Strange Doings in the Kingdom of the Giants, Hears Two Nos and One Yes, and Receives a Lecture on the Care and Feeding of Tools
“Sell you a Way, miss?” a voice hissed.
September smoothed her hands over her Criminal’s finery—quite the richest and softest fabric she’d ever known. Even the Watchful Dress had not clung to her this way, almost as though she was wearing nothing at all. But her new clothes were not in the least tight. The silk hung loose and sly and knowing, as if the very stitches were promising to keep her safe, no matter what she might get up to. Though the air crackled with chill, she felt warm and light. She did not want to wear it. She did not want to be marked out. She did not want to let them decide what she should be called. But they did get to decide. This was their place. My dear, when you can change something just by saying a word, that is magic. And it felt so lovely against her skin. She did not want to admit that, but there it was. September pulled the last piece down over her head: a black cap with earflaps and long ribbons meant to tie under her chin. She let them hang free.
“I got all kinds right here, come see,” the voice wheedled. His breath brushed her ear, even beneath the Criminal’s cap. September whirled around.
One of the blue-faced folk in long coats stood behind them. He had the same purply blue hair as the Blue Wind, sticking out under a policeman?
??s cap. His eyebrows stuck out spikily, stiff with frost. When he spoke, his cheeks ballooned like a cherub’s. The man opened his coat surreptitiously, his eyes shimmering in a wild and wily way. Beneath, his clothes flashed—long periwinkle trousers with teal patches and curling cornflower shoes like a jester’s. But what his coat hid within flashed brighter. September gasped. Planets hung on the lining of that thick jacket—small globes full of swirling clouds or shifting seas, continents like tiny chunks of ruby or topaz, cool silver moons and boiling purple suns. Light poured out from the depths of the coat, bathing her in colors. She could hardly look away. But she had to look away, she had to—the creaks and the groans of the Model A being prodded by prospective buyers would not let her stay. September dragged her feet away from the glitter of planets, mumbling apologies she did not mean.
“Come back, miss! You won’t find better Ways than mine if you’ve lost yours. Or if you just want to jump the track and grab hold of someone else’s…” he called after them, even more softly, but the softer his voice, the clearer September could hear it. She pulled the black silk cap around her ears.
The long-coats crowded around Mr. Albert’s car had blue faces, as well, wild hair and frost curling over their fingers. Men and women not in the least blue milled around, picking up shadowy bits and chunks from rickety stalls. None of them could squeeze through to get a peek at the automobile. September saw some brown faces, a few pink cheeks, and one blazing golden fellow with hair like sunbeams. But the blue folk knew their business and jostled for position. The golden fellow drew aside, lured by a young girl with robin’s egg pigtails and a cigarette seller’s tray full of desirables. The crowd closed behind him. When the long-coats breathed on the car, the paint peeled just a little more. When they brushed up against the driver’s door, the metal creaked forlornly.